


Crosswords

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, SHIELD but alternate way they meet, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 21:46:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3356435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil has a coffee shop he goes to in his down time. He loves it and it's his. One day a guy in a ridiculously gorgeous, tight red t-shirt comes in to order coffee. Phil decides he's willing to share the place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crosswords

Phil watches everyone who comes into his favorite coffee shop, _The Viking Cup_. He can’t help it. This is a place for him to get away from work and all of the harrowing decisions he has to make every day at SHIELD, but he can’t get away _too_ much. Too much will get him killed. Well. Maybe he overthinks a little, but it doesn’t matter. He watches everyone.

Right now he’s watching a guy in a mouthwateringly tight red t-shirt and black jeans that hug his hips perfectly, so life’s not all bad. He sips his peppermint latte – they keep a bottle on hand for him no matter what time of year it is – and watches the guy order a vanilla latte with a smile.

His smile makes Phil choke a little on his drink. It lights up his face and makes his gorgeous blue-green eyes fucking _twinkle_. He’s got crinkles on the edge of his eyes and he’s got a weathered face that looks vaguely familiar, but Phil can’t place him and it doesn’t send up alarm bells, so it’s not a dangerous kind of familiar. He watches the guy joke with the cashier and run his hand through his carefully tousled dusty blond hair as he waits for his drink. Phil loves his hair and is suddenly lost in the thought of running his own hands through it and grabbing it tightly as he pulls him – shit. Fantasizing here? What the fuck.

He takes another drink of his coffee and looks down at the crossword puzzle he’s finishing up. He only has one clue left: _Very inappropriate for_ _children_. He looks up again and the guy is reaching a calloused hand out to take his drink, and then he turns. Phil tears his gaze away and looks back down at his puzzle. Four-letter word for _very_ _inappropriate for children_ again. _Fuck_? Too vulgar for the New York Times, he figures.

“Coulson?” a voice asks.

Phil looks up again and has to swallow hard to avoid choking again. The guy in the red t-shirt is standing at his table. Phil sets his drink down and stands up. “Yes?” He wipes his hands off on a napkin.

The guy smiles again, and now Phil doesn’t have a drink to choke on, so he just stares a beat too long at the guy’s narrow red lips. They match his t-shirt, Phil thinks.

“You don’t – I’m Clint Barton. We work together,” the guy explains, and he smiles again.

Phil almost wishes he’d stop doing that. It’s making following all of this difficult. He runs through the catalogue in his head and comes up with a weird answer. “No, you’re not,” he says, and feels a rush of adrenaline in his veins because there’s clearly something going on here.

The guy steps back and narrows his eyes. “Uh. Yes. I am. We met at the weapons training last month, remember? Sitwell introduced us.”

And oh, god, he does remember now. But last month at the weapons training the black jeans and red t-shirt was a dark tac suit, and the tousled hair was slicked against his head, and there was definitely no smiling. The Clint Barton Phil knew was always wearing a scowl, was always countering plans with plans of his own in a thin voice, was always Sitwell or Hill’s problem that they complained about with a scowl of their own. Fury had been hinting at pairing Barton with Phil, but he hadn’t followed through on it yet.

_This_ guy is gorgeous and pleasant and making Phil’s body feel sensations it thought it had stifled quite nicely over the few years he’d been with SHIELD, but he does recognize him now. Phil pulls in a deep breath. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”

Barton’s grin comes back and he nods. “Yeah. We haven’t had a chance to really work together.”

Phil nods and finds himself at a loss for words. He’s never at a loss for words at SHIELD, with his practiced role and intense understanding of himself within those walls. Here, though, well. Barton is standing there looking like a t-shirt model, although his grin is kind of goofy, and he’s expecting Phil to maintain conversation about . . . what, exactly? “Uh, would you like to sit down?” he hears himself say.

Barton looks around, like he’s checking out the angles Phil has left him, and then nods. “Sure. I’ve got some time.” He sits down, but not before he scoots his chair a little closer to Phil so that he can have some similar sight lines. “I just found this place,” he says. “I like it.”

Phil looks around. “It’s close enough to my place and to SHIELD, and no one seemed to know about it.” He tries to keep the disappointment that his favorite coffee shop is now compromised out of his voice. He must not do a very good job of it, though.

“Yeah, sorry,” Barton says, and he ducks his head. It’s adorable.

“No,” Phil assures him. “It’s okay. I’ll find another good one.” He says this, and then after a second and the way Barton’s grin drops from his face like a weight, he realizes what he said. “I mean,” he tries. He fails.

“I won’t come back, man. I get it,” Barton says, and the earnestness in his eyes and the way his forehead crinkles just a little to emphasize how serious he is makes Phil’s stomach flutter a little. “It’s tough to find a place where you’re safe but alone in this job,” he adds, and sips his coffee. “I get it,” he repeats.

Phil decides that maybe he needs to be a little more careful with his words here, so he drinks his coffee and looks around. He watches the pixie-like barista serve coffee with a smile to the grumpiest customer they have, an old man with white hair and almost black eyes. He looks at the antique ship artwork on the wall and the fading gold rugs splayed around a little haphazardly. “I think it’s comfy,” he says, and then wonders what kind of spell Clint Barton has cast to make Phil’s mouth-to-brain filter go completely offline.

Barton smiles and nods. “I always feel kind of like they wrap you in a blanket when you walk in the door here.”

Phil cocks his head. “You’ve been here before?”

“I come a lot,” Barton answers. “Once I sleep a mission off I get kinda jittery and need to leave my apartment. This is a pretty good place to calm down.”

Phil’s logic is exactly the same. “You don’t have to stop coming. It can be both of ours,” he says, and wants to slap himself again. This is getting ridiculous.

Barton laughs, and Phil would swear that his laugh is sweeter than the syrup in their coffee cups. “Okay,” he says. “Ours.”

Phi l feels something unfurl in his chest, and Barton asks him where he lives, so he answers, telling him about the apartment a couple blocks away and the crazy people who share his building. Barton replies with a story about a guy who hands out mints in his lobby and the old lady who sings in the elevator, and suddenly they’re talking, and talking, and talking. Phil’s coffee is gone and the sky outside the shop is dimming, and Phil’s sides hurt from laughing so much.

“I’m going to need to go,” he finally says, but he follows it with, “Which sucks,” because he just can’t stop saying whatever’s on his mind today.

“Did you finish your crossword puzzle?” Barton – now Clint – asks.

“Almost. Got stuck on the last one,” Phil replies.

Clint looks down at the puzzle, grins, and says, “Sexy.”

Phil doesn’t have any coffee left, but he sputters anyway. “What?” he chokes out.

“Four letter word that fits with _very inappropriate for children_ ,” Clint answers, and his grin changes to a very real smirk. “Sexy.”

Phil looks down at the puzzle, considers the last hour, and realizes that he hasn’t watched one person who has come into the shop since Clint sat down. This realization doesn’t help his filter. “Yes, you are,” he says, and offers a smirk of his own because _screw_ it. He’s not paired with Barton yet, might not be, and anyone who can get him to say things he doesn’t mean to say is worth complimenting. And that t-shirt should be illegal, as far as Phil is concerned.

Clint nods, leans over the table, showing off his delicious-looking biceps, and says, “Wanna go back to your place to find another puzzle to do together?”

And Phil says yes, very enthusiastically, because he’s off the clock, and spending his free time peeling Clint Barton out of that shirt and those black jeans sounds like the best plan he’s made outside of work in a very, very long time.


End file.
